"Sometimes I lie awake at night and I ask where have I gone wrong? Then a voice says to me - This is going to take more than one night... In the Book of life, the answers aren't in the back."...Charlie Brown

Thursday, February 7, 2013

"Filet Mignon........................."

There were nearly twenty of us in the Wednesday evening Bible study. Next week we will start a new series of ten classes that will utilize an A.W. Tozer work “Life in the Spirit” for a path that we intend to follow, the Bible, itself, remaining the one foundational truth in so far as any and all discussion generated. Tonight, though, we went to the ninth chapter of Hebrews as a springboard and examined what it really means to be “saved by the blood”. That’s “deep water” and, for a few minutes, I really thought perhaps we would do no more than simply review the subject, quoting Scripture without getting into the meat of things. People, after all, only know what they have been served down through the years; and, mostly, believers possess but a collection of phrases, terminology they can quote, but cannot give meaningful definition to it. As it turned out, on this occasion, our teacher issued “scuba gear” and down we went. Did we walk out later with the question conquered? No; but at least we were better equipped for the journey. Here at home, then, toward the end of our first reading assignment, I smiled when the above author inquired as to how many truths have gotten “snowed under”, so many within the faith trusting in them, but having received no real educational substance concerning them. Truth, of course, will always be bigger than any of us; yet the One who proclaimed Himself to embody such word did command us to pick up our cross and pursue……

2 comments:

Some days, I wish the mystery wasn't quite so mysterious. Some days, I just want things spelled out for me. Some days, I'm just too dense or worn out.

And yet, I know that even if I had all the answers given to me, the odds are pretty good that I'd likely be just like those stiff-neck people of old complaining and getting all nostalgic about the good old days back in Egypt.

"Pick up our cross" is one of those phrases that really stumps me some days.

"Picking up our cross" has always meant to me a matter of just dealing with "me", not so much in terms of problems, be it sickness or otherwise, but the guy who has to walk through it. How do I take it? What is my attititude? How do I handle it in so far as my relationship with others? In turth, that is really the subject we dealt with the other night in class: "Saved by the blood" is not about some element within His blood that empowers me or protects me, but the Holy Ghost within me, bought by the shedding of that blood, the "sacrifice" now not a repeated matter of my killing some animal for my redemption, but going to that Reality within Who meets me in my need...